Charlotte Gave Me An Attitude Adjustment…….

Listen folks, I’m not responsible for everything I write! I get to talking and things just seem to come from out of nowhere. It’s an inherit problem when I’m trying to write and think at the same time. I casually mentioned that we had an ugly girl or two in town back when I was living down at the end of Stonewall. You’d a’thought I’d called the pope a Baptist!

Beth was the first to reach me. She lives in Tallahassee. “Have you looked closely at the picture beside your by-line? You ain’t exactly Robert Redford. You’re not even Beli Logosi! Jack Elam had better eyes than you!  What happened to your hair? You been sleeping in that shirt? And you have the audacity to attempt a joke at the expense of your classmates. Look in the mirror big boy!”

Lucille in Kentucky didn’t take up so much of my time, “I’ve seen better cheeks than yours on a Dominecker hen.”

Brenda took a little different track. “Did you think about the feelings of those girls when you made those enigmatic, insensitive, irresponsible and archaic remarks? Do you realize you could scar them for life? How could you not consider the damage you could inflict? Obviously, all you use your head for is a hat rack!”

I don’t know Brenda. And I’ve never seen enigmatic and archaic used in the same sentence. I’ve got a working grasp of archaic but I have no idea what enigmatic means. And I don’t think anything I could write down in 2010 could scar one of my childhood friends for life—they already lived most of it!

And let’s talk about the “damage I could inflict” for just a second. Vicki Fields used to chase me down at recess and beat the ever loving dickens out of me. Now Brenda, that is inflicting some damage! Miss Booth would line the boys up on one side of the room and the girls along the opposite wall. We’d have a spelling bee. Boys against the girls! We had Bob Edwards, Jimmy Carter, Marlin Hicks….I’m talking some pretty smart dudes. We never won those things. Not once! Diana Morris could spell every word in the English language when we were in the second grade. That used to irritate the heck out of the guys…...and give us a complex at the same time. We’d have those foot races in the sixth grade and Judy Barksdale would blow by me like I was sitting still! Jane Hill wouldn’t go out with me when we were sophomores in high school. I begged her. I called her up at night and she’d hang up on me. I took to walking by her house, she wouldn’t come out. I offered to carry her books to class; she banged me over the head with them. It’s enough to make you sit and wonder just exactly who it is that has scarred whom!          

I never went to church without Pam Collins, Ruth Ann Wiley and LaRenda Bradfield staring me down for something stupid I’d said in Sunday School. They’d make fun of my Buster Brown shoes or the grass stains on my carefully starched shirt. And those same girls could ruin a Roy Rogers picture show at the Park Theatre by giggling through two shoot-outs and a horse chase.

Just seemed to me boys and girls were on different wave lengths back in those days.

I remember when Charlotte Melton was named queen of the Dyer County Rodeo. I walked to her house to catch a ride down to the rodeo. She came out with her hair rolled up in those gigantic tin can type rollers. She, I supposed, was wanting to look her best when they handed out the crown. I didn’t have any sisters and was a mite taken back by the metallic glint and the size of the tomato cans atop her head. “Dang Charlotte, that face would make a freight train take a dirt road.” She whipped the stuffings out of me! In her front yard, with her parents standing there!

What a memory! And about the fifth or sixth time she smashed me in the face, a couple of those cans let loose, her hair fell across her face and you know what……she didn’t look half bad. With that sun behind her, she was even pretty. ’Course, I didn’t get much of a look; both eyes were beginning to swell shut.

We fought and loved and studied and gossiped and cried…..and danced when the music was right. No ugly girls here! They were the best friends I had for those special, memorable, impressionable, growing up years. Listen, you can’t be more beautiful than that! They have all contributed immeasurably to my life. And I love them more today than I did when we were taking turns reading about Dick, Jane and Spot.

And I also took note that none of them made a fuss, or even called, about the “ugly” comments. They understood. Heck, they are still laughing over me getting put out of the spelling bee in the second grade by missing c-a-r-t. You can’t fool those folks that grew up with you!

On further review, I don’t know if writing about them makes me archaic or enigmatic…….But it brings a smile to my face. I get to remember them once more. And appreciate again the absolute beauty in each one of them.

Respectfully,

Kes